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Richard W. Siegel

Robert W. Hunt Professor of Materials Engineering

Richard W. Siegel has been the Robert W. Hunt Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute since June 1995, and was Department Head from 1995 to 2000. In April 2001, Dr. Siegel became the founding Director of the Rensselaer Nanotechnology Center at the Institute and, since September 2001, also founding Director of the US National Science Foundation Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center for Directed Assembly of Nanostructures. He was graduated from Williams College in 1958 with an AB degree in physics and received an MS degree in physics in 1960 and a PhD degree in metallurgy in 1965 from the University of Illinois in Urbana. After two years of postdoctoral materials research at Cornell University, Siegel served on the faculty of the State University of New York at Stony Brook (1966-1976) in the Department of Materials Science. He was a research scientist in the Materials Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory from 1974 to 1995, serving most of that time as group leader and research program manager in the areas of metal physics or defects in metals. Dr. Siegel has been a visiting professor in Germany, Israel, India, Switzerland and Japan, and has been active in local, national, and international professional organizations. He was a member (2003-09) of the Nanotechnology Technical Advisory Group of the US President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. He chaired the World Technology Evaluation Center worldwide study of nanostructure science and technology (1996-98) for the US government that led in 2001 to the US National Nanotechnology Initiative, was chairman of the Long Range Planning Committee and a Councillor of the Materials Research Society, and is a past chairman (1992-96) of the International Committee on Nanostructured Materials. Siegel earlier served on the US National Materials Advisory Board Committee on Materials With Sub-Micron Sized Microstructures and was co-chairman of the Study Panel on Clusters and Cluster-Assembled Materials for the US Department of Energy. He has been active in community service as well. From 1983 to 1991 he served on the Governing and Executive Boards of the two-county wide DuPage/West Cook Regional Special Education Association in Illinois and also as an elected member of the Hinsdale Township High School District 86 Board of Education, serving from 1987 to 1991 as the President of the Board. Active in materials research for over 50 years, Siegel has studied the properties of defects in metals, atomic diffusion, and the synthesis, processing, characterization, properties, and applications of nanostructured ceramics, metals, composites, and biomaterials. Dr. Siegel’s research activities have garnered over $60 million in funding from federal, state, industry, and private sponsors. He has authored or coauthored more than 300 articles and patents (21 issued with 6 others pending), edited ten books, presented more than 500 invited lectures around the world on these subjects, and was an Executive Producer of the Molecularium® Project’s Riding Snowflakes (2005), Molecules to the MAX! (2009) and NanoSpace® (2012). Siegel’s work is highly cited with over 10,000 citations to date; he was listed by Science Watch as the fourth- most highly cited author worldwide in materials science during 1990-94 and among the top 100 (0.02%) during 2000-10. He was a founding Editor of Nanostructured Materials, an associate editor of Materials Letters for 25 years, and is presently a member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and the Journal of Metastable and Nanocrystalline Materials. Siegel is a founder and Director of Nanophase Technologies Corporation, a publicly held manufacturing company started in 1989; his early work with them was recognized by a 1991 US Federal Laboratory Consortium Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer. In 1992 he was made an Honorary Member of the Materials Research Society of India "in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of Materials Science and Engineering" and in 1993 he was made an Honorary Member of the Materials Research Society of Japan. Dr. Siegel is a 1994 recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Senior Research Award in recognition of his research and teaching accomplishments. He presented the 1996 D.K.C. MacDonald Lecture in Canada. In 2001, Dr. Siegel was named a RIKEN Eminent Scientist in Japan, and in 2003 in Germany he received a Deutsche Bank Prize “Pioneer of Nanotechnology – Nanomaterials”. In 2010, Dr. Siegel was named a Fellow of the Materials Research Society.